So there we were, me and Ivani, the gorgeous Brazillian, off to Disneyland. We had fun. And spent the next 3 days together until she went back to Sao Paulo. Leaving me bereft. Again. The last time I’d been ‘bereft, when I left the stewardess on the plane, only lasted a few minutes. Though Ivani returns to our story in a later, exciting episode.

So I stayed with ‘the uncle’ and his son for a bit and then had a needle-in-a-haystack moment.

You gotta remember, this was 1981. No mobile phones, no email, so contact was by telephones fixed to walls in homes or in little boxes in the street, or posted letters. How did we survive?

About 5 years previously I’d met a guy whilst working a summer on a kibbutz in Israel. An American called Paul. We collected eggs together. We beat up chickens together. Then I came home and Paul was left there, his ‘future life’. And then one day, looking up a phone number in the San Fernando Valley phone book (56 million entries, big as fucking bus), I saw his name, as he has a rather unusual surname. Could it be??? Oddly, it was. He’d returned home and was now living near enough that he was in the same phone book as I would have been if I’d had a phone.

And Paul introduced me to ‘proper’ LA. Tommy’s Burgers. Oki Dog. The Whisky-a-go-go. And, much as everyone generally hates LA, after a few weeks I actually started to get it. The place. The size of it. The fact that its not ‘a city’ but loads of them all stuffed together. Each with its own centre and eateries and bars and stuff. And I liked it and decided that, rather than travel alone, I’d stay for a bit. So I went and got a social security number. Told them I wanted to open a bank account for my travels and they just here you are; 35653445676, or BC87665/76 or whatever it was. And with that number, the world (as Americans understand the world, generally a world that runs from San Francisco to Boston, from Alaska to Miami) becomes your oyster. Because it enables you to work. No-one ever asks for the mythical ‘green card’, but everyone wants your social security number. And I had one.

But I was still, really, a ‘wet-back’. An illegal. I just spoke better English than such types normally do. In fact, with all due modesty, I spoke better English than 98% of the ‘legals’ too. Even with my East End twang I was still more Trevor MacDonald than Barbara Windsor. At least to Americans.

Me (new/old) mate Paul also loved a road trip. And I was the willing Clyde to his Bonnie. And off we’d trek to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Palm Springs, even over to Lake Havasu in Arizona (where they stupidly bought the ‘wrong’ London Bridge) and to ski in Squaw Valley.

So I needed to work. To supplement my meagre savings and allow me to hang around longer. But was nervous about working because of my tourist status. But Paul knew a geezer, who knew a geezer… and I ended up as so many illegal immigrants do, pumping gas at the Chevron station. Or, ‘the best job I ever had’, as its now known.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx